Wrestling Soapbox Presents: The Slammies, the Hardyz and the Internet in General

The Slammy Awards, like a lot of original concepts, have been watered down and gimmicked to the point of ridiculosity.

God rest his soul, Owen Hart must be turning over in his grave after the Slammy Awards this past Monday night.

Considering how WWE presents the Slammies as "the most prestigious award in entertainment" and as wrestling's version of the Grammy or Oscar awards, I found this most recent incarnation of the ceremony to be by and large the worst edition ever presented.

As Wrestlezone.com columnist Martyn Nolan wrote himself, the WWE changes these awards every single year. How could an award possibly retain any sort of value when it's something different each year? Perhaps this is the writing team's brilliant answer to continued creativity. But wouldn't, say, the Despicable Me award, be worth more if it had year's of prestige and had been held by the best heels of year's past?

Of course, we ask too much of WWE. While the Slammies were once an effective, albeit cheesy, way of getting a Superstar over (Owen Hart anyone?), they've effectively been reduced to nothing more than an additional talking point and shiny filler to carry over existing storylines or as a bone to throw to people who aren't receiving the primary push (Laycool).

But before I get ahead of myself, let's start at the beginning. How has WWE managed to completely destroy the John Cena/Wade Barrett storyline?

I've said from the start that the downfall of the Nexus storyline was having them lose at SummerSlam back in August. If they couldn't stand up to the WWE stars in their very first true confrontation, how could anyone take them seriously afterwards?

They managed to recover quite a bit with this intriguing free or fired storyline, which many people seemed to hope would be the start of a much desired Cena heel turn.

But WWE once again chose to play the safe route and had Cena "fired" to maintain his status as a hero.

While that was all well and good, they have now completely ruined months worth of work and storyline by having Cena fired for no longer than three weeks. On top of this, he didn't miss a singleRAW!

How in the bluest of all hells are we supposed to buy into this storyline when Cena can't even miss one show? Would it have killed WWE to take him off TV for at least an episode or two? To at least pretend that he was fired? You know...kayfabe? Have we completely gotten rid of that?

Instead, Cena gets fired and continues showing up at every single show, doing the exact same thing he was doing when he was still employed, pre-Nexus.

On top of this, before his official re-hiring, he was let into the ring, assaulted Nexus members and even had his theme song play. Even the nine-year-olds that WWE is playing to had to have sat there at least for a second and wondered why Cena wasn't fired.

Well, when you don't take him off TV and you have him coming to the shows week after week, they're not going to believe he was fired. So what was the point of firing him? I'm still trying to figure this out.

All to build up to a chairs match, one of the most idiotic and half-baked gimmick matches in wrestling today.

To follow this up, Cena wins two Slammies?

WWE and more likely, Vince McMahon particularly, is paranoid about the use of Cena. He may be your top star, but with every passing year, these kids grow a little older and at some point they are going to see how many stars get brushed aside to heap more and more useless accolades on one guy.

I honestly felt the Superstar of the Year should have gone to Randy Orton, no contest. The guy has had an awesome year and screw what the IWC heel marks say: The man wasn't forced into a babyface push. He was turned by the crowd, a good, natural and honest allegiance switch.

As everyone touts, he's done nothing different from what made him hated last year. The difference is that people want to see him do it now. He's easily been the most consistent performer going on several months now and his momentum is undeniable.

Even if they felt Cena just had to have the Superstar of the Year award for the second time, there was absolutely zero logic whatsoever in giving him the Holy #@$^ Moment of the Year award.

Anyone who believes throwing someone off a car and through a stage is more visually impressive than hitting an RKO from a horizontal position on someone in the middle of a shooting star press is just an idiot but then again, we all know that the voting is gimmicked.

As I stated before, most of the awards were very obviously bogus and received little more than momentary fanfare. Once again, we were treated to the painfully obvious fact that apart from the occasional Beth Phoenix or Natalya, Michelle McCool is the only Diva that will ever get pushed. Aside from Layla, who is fortunate by association.

This soapbox isn't just limited to the atrocious Slammy awards, however. I've also come to the conclusion that the combined legacy of the Hardyz is being completely destroyed, by the Hardy brothers themselves.

This is probably old news to a lot of people, but I've tried for a long time to have faith in Matt Hardy. He's always been a good talent and he always had to potential to be a breakout star.

I've never been a fairweather Hardy fan. I always believed he could take it to the next level, even when all the haters were shouting from the rooftops that it was his own fault. But now, I have to withdraw my support.

The man is actually on the internet, proving them all right. Though Jeff has been destroying his legacy for a lot longer, the pair of them are on the 'net right now, making complete idiots out of themselves. The following are recent tweets from their Twitter accounts that should have made the rounds by now:

"BTW, The Scumsheets always cover MNM, the show I was on last night. They didn't today.. Why u ask? Cuz I call them out on their bullsh*t.. The reason why they don't give me publicity.. Cuz they don't want my voice 2 be heard-So RT this-"THE DIRTSHEETS FEAR MATT F'N HARDY!" :) RT"

Does this even need further analysis? Matt Hardy, one of wrestling's most outspoken stars against the "dirt sheets," is now giving them further ammunition. Sure, maybe at one time he did it on purpose. But he's gone way beyond that.

His immaturity is astounding. But perhaps this is why he's best friends with Shane Helms, a man who also proved his equal lack of maturity with recent cheap heat remarks directed at Shawn Michaels.

Jeff Hardy, who single-handedly flushed his own career down the toilet by peddling drugs, a man who manages to nearly lose his custom made, $17,000 TNA Championship, a man who clearly wrestles under the influence of something, is going to go on Twitter and tell everyone who doesn't believe him to f*ck off.

Remember that this is the man TNA is pushing as their Champion. I wonder if they've started to regret that yet...

But that about does it for this edition of the Soapbox. If I continue, I may never stop.

Follow me on Twitter @roughdivisions.

The questions of the day are:

WWE Fans: What would you do to improve upon the concept of the Slammies, whether you liked this past Monday's show or not?

TNA Fans: Are TNA Champion Jeff Hardy, and his unemployed brother Matt, causing the company further damage with their childish internet behavior?